How Much Is the Tooth Fairy Paying These Days?

Some of us can remember a time when losing a tooth meant that we might find some spare change underneath our pillows the following morning.

However, according to a recent survey by credit card company Visa, the days of a fallen chomper being worth chump change are long gone.

In fact, the Tooth Fairy’s going rate is an average of $3 per tooth, which is a 15 percent increase from last year and not that much less than the current price of a gallon of gasoline.

In addition to the survey, Visa also developed a free online tool called the Tooth Fairy Calculator, which establishes a household “Tooth Fairy” rate based on certain demographic information like age, gender, income and education.

For example, a child of a 39-year-old male parent from Indiana with only a high school education who earns somewhere between $25,000-$39,000 per year can expect to receive roughly two dollars per tooth – the equivalent of the 84 cents the parent received from the Tooth Fairly when he was a kid.

Unfortunately, teeth appear to be less valuable in New York, with the same statistics generating one dollar less per tooth based on location alone.

A survey based on nearly 2,000 telephone interviews found that 18 percent of the young and toothless receive five dollars per tooth, while 30 percent get a standard one dollar. Still, times are hard for about three percent of the population who claim to only get an old school rate of less than a dollar per tooth.